Hi Everyone, I think we had a really informative LOPSA-Live tonight. I've gotten a lot out of the past two candidate forums, and I've learned a lot about what our candidates are planning for their terms. I can't wait for the election to begin!
One of the things that I have noticed is that the issue of women in technology. There were several questions tonight, and one kind of stuck with me. cat-xeger asked "Many FOSS-related organizations have adopted harassment policies for their events. Do we have one, or is one in the works? (anti-harassment, to be clear)" Matt Disney responded that we had an etiquette policy and that we use it in #LOPSA sometimes. Michael Gehrke referred to the Code of Ethics. Here's the etiquette policy: http://governance.lopsa.org/LOPSA_Policies/Etiquette_Policy I won't quote it here, but it's an etiquette policy, basically saying "respect other people", which is a good idea. After looking around the net, though, it is definitely _not_ a harassment policy...so I thought about it like this: If the question comes up as often as it does, there must be a reason behind it, which means that we need to work to make sure that everyone feels welcome while at the same time letting everyone know that NONE of our members should feel harassed. Like I said, I'd looked through a few online policies and I picked one that seemed pretty clear and relatively straightforward. It was the State of Wisconson's Harassment Policy, and you can find it online here: http://dwd.wisconsin.gov/er/discrimination_civil_rights/publication_erd_10449_p.htm I took this policy and I made a few changes here and there. I added a preamble, substituted "member" for "employee" a lot, and generally made it come inline with what our organization stands for and what I thought the LOPSA policy should say. One important bit that I added was the protection of LOPSA members against non-members. If you are at a LOPSA-sponsored conference, and you're a LOPSA member, and a non-LOPSA member harasses you, I think our organization should react just as strongly as it would if you were harassed by a member. The document that I've drafted is online here: http://goo.gl/u6AeW - it's in Google Docs, and I've made it world-readable. Please submit any changes that you think should be made here, and we can discuss it. Once we've got something that we can all (mostly) agree on, I think we should submit it to the board for "ratification" into policy. Please let me know what you think. Thanks! --Matt -- LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? COOKIE MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process.
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